Workers and Managers. Local Compromises and the End of the Working Classes

Abstract

The transformation of industrial enterprises was a major issue in the post-1989 transformation because, under the Communist regime, the enterprise functioned as the balancing point of economic, political, and social dynamics. In chapter one we stressed the very high level of homogeneity of the structure of production and its close interdependence with local territories. For this reason, the process of enterprise rationalization after 1989 was based on the autonomization of property rights and on identifying efficient component parts, defining the functions of units and actors, and recomposing the relations between them both within and outside companies. This process was accompanied by the general diffusion of the notion of control. It involved the adoption of radically new behaviors on the part of the various actors. It would seem that at local enterprise level, as previously in the higher reaches of the politicoeconomic field, the dynamics of change entailed broadly identical strategies. These strategies were initially made up of secrecy, alliances, clannishness, and scheming, the whole being directed toward an enormous misappropriation of local resources. The scope of this misappropriation made it possible both to secure these resources by lending them a new legal basis and by excluding several categories of—the most deprived—actors. Unlike what happened in agriculture or administration, which we shall see below, it was seldom possible in enterprises acquired by foreign buyers for the intermediate actors or the workers to convert their resources.